Will Vendine become the new Sainte-Soline? Environmental activists are organizing a weekend of mobilization on Saturday April 22 and Sunday April 23 against the A69 motorway project, which is to link Toulouse to Castres. Presented as peaceful by its organizers and apprehended as a ZAD in formation by the authorities, this rally places Vendine, a small Occitan town, in the spotlight.
- A useless highway for activists, advantageous according to the prefecture
In Vendine, it has now been a month since environmental activists settled at the top of the plane trees intended to be cut down as part of the A69 motorway project. Since the beginning of the work, these climbers have tried to stop the felling by perching in the trees and climbing on the construction machines. On the side of the road, a camp has been erected in support of those whom activists now call “squirrels”.
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To make way for the A69, fourteen trees, including plane trees, are threatened with felling. The construction of this 2×2 lane toll motorway, estimated at 600 million euros, threatens to artificialise a total of 400 hectares of land, an area of 62 km. The activists are instead asking for the redevelopment of the national 126, which they cite as a pre-existing and free alternative.
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The Tarn prefecture, for its part, is advancing the “time saver of 35 minutes” that the future motorway would allow, representing an advantage for ” road safety “ and the “opening up of the Castres industrial basin”as she pointed out inproject impact study on farming.
Two days of mobilization are planned this weekend on the route of the future A69. Organized by the association La Voie est Libre, the Confédération paysanne and the environmental movement Les Uprisings of the Earth, whose dissolution Gérald Darmanin has asked for, the event is presented as “Festive and family”.
- The mobilization weekend, an “outstretched hand” to politicians
On Saturday, the demonstrators will be welcomed at two camps in the municipalities of Vendine and Montégut-Lauragais, halfway between Toulouse and Castres. Conferences and a car race will be organized. The demonstration, which will begin at noon, will aim to denounce the character “ecocide, antisocial and useless” of highway project.
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The first “squirrel” to have taken up residence in the plane trees of Vendine was the climber-arborist Thomas Brail, founder of the National Group for the Surveillance of Trees (GNSA). The activist had already made himself known for similar actions in 2019 and 2022.
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Contacted by “Obs”, Thomas Brail says that several thousand demonstrators are expected this weekend. ” We have no worries, we are in the festive, in the joy, the good humor and the pedagogy “, he assures, describing the peaceful atmosphere that reigns over the camp.
For the founder of the GNSA, the mobilization of this weekend is a ” hand held out to politicians, some of whom were invited to join the rally, such as the president of the Occitanie regional council Carole Delga.
Green MP Sandrine Rousseau also wants to go there to support the activists, whom she thanked ” to remember that the living is much more important than a ribbon of tar ».
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- A “high-risk” demonstration that worries the authorities
According to a note from Territorial Intelligence that RTL has procured, “one hundred radical elements” could be present among the 1,500 to 2,000 people expected this weekend. Still according to this note, the demonstration is announced “high risk”with some “sabotage operations on the various construction sites or infrastructures linked to the project”.
“What happened in Sainte-Soline shows that the executive learned nothing from Sivens”
The prefect of Haute-Garonne Pierre-André Durand for his part affirmed to Toulouse news what “people can demonstrate”while saying “careful that there is no establishment of ZAD” around the construction site. As for the security measures that will be put in place this weekend, the prefect provides for a “light device”.
- The next objective of the “ultra-left” according to Darmanin
Heard by senators on April 5, following the clashes in Sainte-Soline, Gérald Darmanin ranked the Tarn motorway project among the 42 projects “likely to give rise to extremely violent disputes”.
“We already know that we will want to install ZADs and extremely violent demonstrations against the police and the symbols of the State, this is the case of the motorway between Castres and Toulouse which will be the next objective of these ultra-lefts”affirmed the minister who announced the creation of an “anti-ZAD cell” in the columns of the ” JDD a little over two weeks ago.
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The Renaissance MP for Tarn Jean Terlier, meanwhile, assured in a tweet that “the Tarnais will not tolerate a new ZAD” et asked Gérald Darmanin to “take immediate expulsion measures against the handful of radical ecologists who are questioning, in violation of our rule of law, the motorway project between Castres-Toulouse. »
